I'll be thinking of you all tomorrow. Our T-day is going to be on Friday this year, because of various travel schedules, not to mention the several people who wanted to have dinner at their in-laws AND wanted to have dinner at DD's. I'm actually pleased ~~ for once, I won't be rushing home from work to start the prep for all the veggie dishes. Five vegs this year: cream-cheese/chili corn, harvard beets, gingered carrots & pears, snap peas (a change from the spinach squares), and a broccoli/cauliflower dish that has a nutmeg/cheddar sauce. Tried this last year and it was a success. 1 big bag of baby carrots, thoroughly rinsed, and the fat ones cut in half lengthwise. Dump in big pot of lightly salted boiling water, let boil for 10 minutes. While the carrots are cooking, open and drain a can of sliced pears -- this year, I'll have to slice halves, no pre-sliced in stock at the store. Put about ½ cup of pear jelly [or pear jam or apple jelly] in a small bowl and nuke just until warm and mostly melted. Stir ½ teaspoon ground ginger OR 1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger into the melted jelly. Taste jelly and add more ginger if needed (you should be able to clearly taste the ginger). Depending on how many carrots, you may need to double the gingered jelly. Drain the carrots and dump into a large bowl. Pour the gingered jelly over and stir until all carrots are coated. Fold in the pear slices. For the dinner, it does very well on a warming tray, not going mushy. Have a good day, and may all your Thanksgiving dishes be wonderful.

LOSING YOUR LIFESTYLE, but GAINING A NEW YOU! All change has some pain if it's going to be successful! You sound like you are on your way! I have learned to eat carrot stick (those small ones) when I want something crunchy instead of chips. Radishes too. Celry too. Celry and peanut butter. After awhile, you don't want the COST (mentally) of chips... I get a huge bag of almonds, lay some out in a brownie pan, freeze the rest, and bake them until done. I have some in a jar at my desk at work RIGHT NOW! No salt, no sugar...plain, baked almonds. I do eat DOVE DARK CHOCOLATE and sometimes I throw in some almonds. DARK Chocolate has good ingredients for you vs. milk chocolate. Sometimes I splurge and make chocolate mousse. It's worth all the sugary candy in the world! It has improved my palate so that I only want the good stuff now. Less costly in the long run, for my budget, and my diet. I EAT VEGGIES with some Velvetta cheese. Yup, I cheat a little, but it get's me eatin' steamed brocolli, caulifower and brussel sprouts. Do you know a handfull of baby carrots will keep angina away!! I eat NO SALT whole tomato's...I eat those first during a meal or have a cup of tomato juice to fill me up a little first. I make raw veggies and blend the Italian season w. olive oil. Somes I add some cooked whole wheat pasta with hot pepper flakes. I eat more apples now. Never liked them, but now I do. They are filling! I still love fudgesicles and try to fine ones with the least sugar. I do have some indulgences. I have to! But I always EAT CERTAIN FOODS FIRST. Before I can have a fudgesickle, I must eat something of protein or some veggie. I love a good hamburger and buy only lean meat. In another email I told you how I eat more fish. For superbowl weekend, I'll probably be watching LIFETIME or something else, but I'll have my good munchies and crunchies. Ooowww, shrimp sounds good! If anything, the next day, you can ask, WHAT DID I DO TO BETTER MY LIFESTYLE OF EATING BETTER...and you feel soooo good! That has kept me going. Knowing that I CAN do this and I can do this with a new attitude about eating. You will be gaining so much! You need to think of all this junk food in they way your heart would look at it.... "potato chips...Oh, MY, all that FAT and empty calories", "Candy bars...gee all that WAX and hydrogenated oils"... "Store bought cookies...sugar, empty calories, and hydrogenated oils".... "Greasy hambuger...oh, please get the LEAN beef next time....you're cloggin' my arteries!" TAKE YOUR HEART WITH YOU IN YOUR HEAD EVERYTIME YOU BUY OR EAT SOMETHING! Ask her, "WHAT do you prefer?" You are on the road to a new and happier life! Good Luck, June Lynn

Sorry, I didn't mean to do a post and run. I've had a crazy weekend. My name is Deb, and I've actually been on GW off and on since 1999. I post mostly over on Florida Gardening, Brugmansias, and sometimes on Cactus and Succulents. I write articles...lots and lots of articles. I also have a few blogs that are sadly neglected, so I'm trying to get them back up and running, especially my gardening blog. I'm in my late 50's, have lupus, and of course, love to garden. I live in SW Florida and am soon moving to Gainesville, a whole zone north of me, where I will not have a yard at first. I'm going to try to get into a community garden there, so I can at least grow my veggies and some of my plants. Moving at my age is hard, and I thought I'd never leave here, but circumstances forced me to make a choice, so I'm leaving. This yard is too much for me to take care of anymore. I need a break from all this physical labor, but I know I could not live without gardening, so I'm thinking my African Violets will be my new indoor project. I have two sons, 25 and 37, and they both live in Chicago. No, we aren't from Chicago, the older one was there and the younger one was in Seattle and decided he wanted to be with his brother, so there they are. So far, they are both doing well, just going through the normal trials of life, which they moan to me about just like I moaned to my mother when she was living. I am estranged from my family by choice, so my sons are my only family. I'm happier that way. I'm a Pantheist, which is not Christian, but I do believe in God. I just define him differently. To me, God is nature...all of nature, including humans. I searched for many years to find a spiritual path I could follow, and tried everything but Satanism in the process (but I did read about it and it is very scary...totally based on 'self' and making yourself happy, no matter what the consequence). I settled on Pantheism because it makes sense to me. There is no one and nothing to blame if things go wrong or bad things happen. It is all just part of the cycle of life, and that is hard to accept sometimes, but it makes more sense to me than angels and demons. I do pray, so I will be asking for and giving out many prayers. Enough for now. I'm sure you will learn more about me as we go along. Thanks again for the welcome! Here, have some chocolate. I just happen to have extra. Here is a link that might be useful: My Gardening Blog, in case you're interested

Quick report. Meal was a big hit. But, after the day we'd had, so was bed. Ride started at Welches OR and ended at Government Camp OR, which is about 15 miles east along Hwy 26 if you are sensible, but instead we went in the other direction, north into the National Forest on logging roads, and proceeded to ride all the way around Mount Hood, a sort of clockwise circuit, and reach Government Camp from the opposite side. The 42 miles of twisting roads through the forest were gorgeous, with remarkable views, thankfully much shade, generally decent road surface, and we saw two cars in 8 hours. I enjoyed seeing Mount Hood from the back side, a view that not that many people see. But there was also no potable water, no cellphone coverage, several miles of gravel road, and what seemed like endless climbing. There were short steep descents but you couldn't really bomb down them, because the road did have the occasional monster hole or collapsed area, which might be hidden in a patch of deep shadow. And it was 102F up there, according to someone's fancy bike computer. I ran out of water about fifteen miles from the first civilization in Parkdale, got dehydrated, and despite drinking a ton of water and Gatorade at the little grocery store there, my thighs and calves started cramping up on the next stretch, which was a 10 mile climb to reach Hwy 35. I was in my very lowest gear, trying to turn the pedals with as little force as possible, feeling the muscles get tight. Sometimes I had charley horses that I had to pedal through. A couple times I had to get off the bike and sit down until my muscles stopped seizing up. We got to Hwy 35 with another 20 miles of climbing ahead. This is a pretty desolate two lane highway, with no cellphone coverage for most of the way and, on Saturday around 6 pm, maybe one car every 5 or 10 minutes. Several miles down the highway, one of our group had her rear tire blow out. Not the tube, but the tire casing itself. It had been sliced open on a gravel stretch, back in the forest. Our patch held for 50 miles but now the tire had a pencil sized hole worn in the casing, Mary Jean's bike was unrideable, and the sun was getting low. The other three rode ahead to find a cellphone signal and call AAA to retrieve her, and also call her husband to see if he was close enough to come get her. Rick had ferried our clothes and food to the condo that morning, then returned to Portland, due to return late that night. I stayed with Mary Jean, for entirely selfish motives - I figured that the AAA driver who picked her up would surely give me a ride too. With nothing to do, we tried patching the tire casing again, rode half a mile, blew out the re-patch, and started walking, wondering how many hours the others would have to ride to find cell coverage and how busy AAA was on a Saturday night and when the sun would set. It was getting dusk now. A pickup truck approached and slowed, the driver peered at us, and drove on. Several minutes later the truck returned from the other direction, and he was one of the local AAA drivers, off duty, looking for us on his way home. We arrived at the cabin right when our companions rode up. They had ridden to an area with a single cellphone "bar" about forty minutes after leaving us, spent another 15 minutes trying to explain the situation to AAA over a garbled connection, and the closest AAA truck on duty was busy in Sandy, over an hour away. We'd have been out there after dark. Our driver told us that the area where we had been walking was a sort of local Bermuda Triangle, populated with bear and cougar, where people disappeared mysteriously. Most recently, a father and his adult son, hiking, had never been seen again. The thing is, all the locals agree, a cougar wouldn't take on two adult men. So, as you can see, the dinner that night didn't have to be good to be good, if you see what I mean. But it was good too. No-one was awake enough for the swimming pool or hot tub. The next morning I left the others - they were staying in the condo all weekend - and rode the 15 miles down Hwy 26 to my car in Welches. That was a great descent, curvy two lane highway, all downhill, good pavement. Get in a low tuck and you can hit 60 mph on a road like that, in spots you can actually keep up with cars. I didn't, because I was carrying a bag of clothes over my shoulder. I was dehydrated for a day afterwards and my legs still feel heavy. I have a list of precautions to take if I ever ride in the backcountry again. And I made some new friends. So it was a nice day after all.